Common Core
- Page 3
These pages are intended to help inform parents and school officials about
the dangers of Common Core:
Rather than teaching American history and promoting Patriotism it teaches
progressive ideology and suppresses Religion

HH: As you know, all week I’ve
been covering the Common Core controversy and I’ve done so trying to match
one voice in favor with one voice against. In the first hour today, you
heard Patricia Levesque talking up the Common Core. I’m so pleased to
welcome Emmett McGroarty with the American Principles Project who is a
critic of the Common Core State Standards. Emmett thanks for joining me. I
very much appreciate your doing so.
EM: Hugh, it’s an honor. Common Core is a bad idea that just keeps
getting worse.
HH: Well that’s, I want you to lay out, you know, Patricia last hour said
exactly the opposite and good conservatives are on both issues of this issue
so I am betwixed in between. Lay out the case out against ‘em.
EM: Well, first of all, the proponents and the developers of the Common
Core say that this is a state led process and that’s not true. This is a
process that was engineered and funded by private interests, most notably
the Gates Foundation, and it’s something that was developed and pushed by
private trade associations, particularly the National Governor’s Association
and the Council of Chief State School Officers. Those sound like state
entities, but they’re not. They are privately incorporated and they receive
private money to push certain agenda. They don’t have a grant of authority
from any state legislature. Governor’s participating them as individuals,
um, so they own the Common Core.
HH: Okay so—
EM: Copyright on it.
HH: Okay. And so that makes it bad, why?
EM: Well, because the states in agreeing to entering the Common Core
System, they’ve pledged to implement the Common Core 100%. They can’t change
the standards at all. They can add 15% but they can’t change any of it. Uh,
and then tied to the Common Core are federally funded and really federally
managed or overseen high stakes standardized tests. So, in entering the
system the states have given up large swaths of education policy decision
making.
HH: Are the Core Standards any good?
EM: No. The Common Core is highly defective. In short, with English
Language Arts what you have is a greater emphasis on dry informational text
in place of classic literature. In math it ushers in fuzzy math which delays
the learning progression, causes the Common Core to jettison important
concepts like prime factorization and conversions among fractions, decimals
and percents. It delays the learning progression so that by 8th grade,
according to Professor James Milgram of Stanford, Common Core students would
be about 2 years behind their piers in high performing countries. He says it
only gets worst after that
HH: Now, Emmett McGroarty, I’m on the board
EM: almost a joke.
HH: of the Great Hearts Academies in Phoenix, Arizona, private – a public
charter system, very, very successful, traditional, classical learning.
There isn’t any one on the country, there isn’t a conservative or liberal
who could quarrel with the results of our Academy so that I have no doubt
that our thousands of students can meet and match any Common Core anywhere.
But I know there are lots of school systems cause I covered the Los Angles
Unified School District for 10 years for PBS out in LA that are absolutely
shattered in large part. There will be some great performing schools in any
district, but for the most part, just absolutely shattered. Does the Common
Core help the devastated district? Are we at a situation where what we’re
really talking about here is what you see depends on where you stand and if
you’re looking at a devastated district this helps them rebuild but if
you’re looking at a good district it brings you down?
EM: No, no. It’s a dumb down curriculum. This is not a matter of where do
we set the bar here or there. This is a radical shift in curriculum and I
would say, we have in America, we have kind of the gold standard on
educational achievement and that gold standard is really Massachusetts. And
Massachusetts in 1993 formed a bipartisan committee—
HH: I’ve got to sit down, Emmett [laughing]. You just told me something
good came out of Massachusetts? Tell me about it.
EM: Well, it was a bipartisan commission. They sat down and decided what
do we need to do to have a high achieving school system and the decision was
that we need to go back to putting a heavy emphasis on classic literature
and direct instruction math and, then after that the AST rose, the last 4
renditions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Massachusetts
scored at the top in every category. They entered the International Tim’s
competition as if they were a separate country and scored up at the top with
the likes of Singapore.
HH: Now, would it be – what would your reaction be if a state “A” came
along and said we’re adopting the Massachusetts standards, not the Common
Core Standards. What would Emmett McGroarty say?
EM: I would say look, first of all, when we say “we” I hope that it’s
something that respects the input of the people, unlike how the Common Core
was foisted on the states. You know, the people and the legislators have
notice as to what’s happening and an opportunity to be heard and a full
briefing on the issue, but I would say that this is what the Founders
intended is kind of a competition between the states. We don’t need a
monopoly of, a monopoly of mediocre of standards. We need, we need states to
say, heh, this is working in Massachusetts we’re going to look at that and
we’re going to implement standards like that, and maybe we’ll try to make
them better than Massachusetts.
HH: Okay. Okay, that’s a good federalism argument, but there’s also the
counter-argument. If the Core is, in fact, a floor and not a ceiling, and I
hear you saying one of the problems is that it might be a ceiling, but if
it’s a floor, and the states did actually adopt that floor of their own
volition, a federalist couldn’t argue with the state’s adopting the best
experiment out of the laboratory, right? Emmett, we have another segment
coming up, so you have 30 second until the break.
EM: Okay, yes the federalist could be because the states are giving up
control.
HH: Okay. When we come back you’re gong to have to explain that because
if the state legislature, and I might agree or disagree with that, but as a
federalist if the state legislature embraced the Common Core and, they did
so without coercing from the federal government, I don’t know how the
federalists argue with it. I’ll be right back, America. It’s the Hugh Hewitt
Show.
——–
HH: Welcome back, America. It’s Hugh Hewitt with Emmett McGroarty with
the American Principle Project. Last hour you heard me giving me Patricia
Levesque a hard time over the Common Core and now I’m giving Emmett a hard
time over opposition of the Common Core because in opposition and dialectic
there is progress. So, Emmett, if the states actually adopted this, and if
local districts adopted the Common Core Standard, we might want to try and
persuade them that there is a better option, like the Massachusetts option,
but it’s not anti-federalist who have exercised the choice power is it?
EM: Well, the issue depends on who has control. It depends on where does
accountability flow? So does accountability flow into the people to the
citizens to the parents? Um, or is it like in the Common Core System all the
states have pledged to adopt the, the Common Core 100% and not to change it?
And they’ve entered into these federally funded testing consortia so they’ve
given up the control.
HH: But a legislature can always revoke, a legislature can’t bind a
future legislature it’s –
EM: They have to reclaim their resovernigity in say that from here on
out, we’re going to exercise complete control over the standards. We’re
going to change what we don’t want and we’re not going to participate in
this federal testing consortia.
HH: Well I would support any, no state should ever give up the right to
control its own destiny on education. You and I both know that is a core
principle of constitutional.
EM: Governor Haley of South Carolina said about the Common Core, she said
just as we should not – we should relinquish control of education to the
federal government, neither should we cede it to the consciences of other
states. So, that’s what you have with the Common Core. You have, first of
all you have the 2 associations of privately funded associations that own
the Common Core. Then you have all the states that are all participating in
it—pledged to implement it 100%, then you have the federal government.
HH: And that’s the big – and we got that and as Bill Bennett said as Jeb
Bush said if they take over, then all bets are off. Let me close make sure I
get in – where’s the best source of information, in your opinion, Emmett
McGroarty, on the Common Core and opposition around it?
EM: Well, you can look at our website http://fightcommoncore.com/.
HH: Apprightcommoncore.com?
EM: Yeah. There is an aggregator site that’s a participant run called
Truthinamericaeducation.com.
HH: Okay, truthinamericaeducation.com and appproject@ –
EM: Fightcommoncore.com
HH: Fightcommoncore.com. Emmett McGroarty, thank you, I’ll check back
with you. This is just getting started isn’t it?
EM: This is just getting started. This is foisted on the states so it’s
in reverse. Now the debate is occurring not on the front end.
HH: Emmett, thank you. We look forward to having you back America. Stay
tuned. Follow me @HughHewittontwitter. Go for all of these transcripts, all
of them are posted on the transcripts page from the whole Common Core series
of conversations this week on the Hugh Hewitt Show and more today and
tomorrow. They are all available at the transcripts page as soon as Lynne
the magnificent get’s them typed up.

Jeb Bush on the “Common Core”
(Attachment two)

Wednesday,
July 31, 2013 | posted by Hugh Hewitt Print ThisHH: I’m pleased to welcome
now former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to the program. Governor, welcome. Good
to talk to you today.
JB: Great to talk to you.
HH: I have been spending a lot of yesterday and today talking with people
about the Common Core and as I explained yesterday with Bill Bennett and Jay
Mathews and others today, all of a sudden, a couple of months ago people
started approaching me at forums and asking my opinion about this and
voicing criticism and some support, as Bill Bennett explained yesterday,
what’s your connection to it, what’s the origin of Common Core, Governor
Bush?
JB: Common Core state standards were standards that were developed by
Governors and state school officers, those folks that are either
Commissioners of Education or Secretaries of Education in 2006-2007.
Forty-five states agreed to those standards. The intent was to create
standards so that when a young person reached 12th grade and graduated from
12th grade they would be college and/or career ready, because right now
about a 1/3 of our kids are college or career ready, even if they get a
diploma. So, the idea was to benchmark these standards to the best in the
world, make fewer of them, require critical thinking skills, make them
higher standards and make it voluntary. And, from that effort; amazingly,
really, if you think about it, 45 states have signed up.
HH: And so, was the genius of the idea yours? Where did it come from?
JB: No, the genius, the genius came, I think, really came from the
National Governor’s Association business, military, a lot of people are
concerned about higher standards, and I am as well. I think our standards
are way too low. If you think about it, if we spend more per student than
any country in the world other than Luxembourg apparently, and we did a
third of our kids, even though a lot them get a piece of paper that say
they’ve graduated, but they take, they take remedial courses in college or
they – they can’t, they don’t have the skills to get a job. That’s a failed
system. There’s a huge cap so raising the standards I’ve always been for
them, but this effort was initiated after I left as Governor with the
National Governor’s Association.
HH: Where does, does it impose curriculum?
JB: The curriculum, this is why people get all riled up and legitimately
so. They are told that this, this will be a national curriculum. In fact,
standards are different than curriculum, and that where I think the biggest
misnomer is where people legitimately get concerned. I would be concerned if
we had a national curriculum influenced by the federal government. My God,
I’d break out in a rash.
HH: [laughing]
JB: You know, these are standards that are common that have been embraced
from the bottom up, not from the top down, and the curriculum will be
created just as it always has been. And by the way, the curriculum we have
today for those that are concerned about Common Core state standards, I’m
glad they are interested in the subject because the curriculum we have today
is, in many places, is politically correct. It is horrendous. And so it’s
totally how you teach to those standards is still something as it should be
driven by state and local school districts and by policy makers at the state
level.
HH: Now, I have been through, I’ve been through some of them. For
example, the first grade core requires students to count to 100 and to count
10 in either direction from any given number. Very elementary obvious
standards, but I wasn’t able to find online history standards and English
standards. I actually think science and math standards are not going to be
very controversial. Do you think the controversy comes out of what will be
required to be known on history and on English?
JB: Well, there are history standards and there, the science standards
has just come out. We don’t, the foundation that I had doesn’t have an
opinion on the science standards. There are mixed feelings about that. The
standards that are developed today at their fullest are, and the ones that
will be driving its excellence, are language arts, reading in effect and
math. And I think in both those cases, given the fact that curriculum is
established, developed at the local level, um, that having these higher
standards is really critical. If you can’t read intelligently and you can’t
calculate math, it’s hard to take it to the next level and all the other
courses.
HH: Okay. Now, let me run through some of off stated criticisms I’ve
found in the really couple of weeks that I’ve been looking at this. Number
one, very facial but our friends on the left like to say that your friend,
and some would say your protégé Senator Marco Rubio, is opposed to the
Common Core, Jeb Bush is favoring the Common Core, that must mean great
controversy. What’s the story there?
JB: [laughing] I’ve not talked to Marco about it. I read a letter that
was partially published in the St Peat Times and in that he expressed
concern about national curriculum. I have the exact same concern. I also
have concern about the federal government coercing states to embrace this.
Florida has embraced it ,and has a Florida Senator he should be happy with
the fact that this has been vetted by the legislature, and may have been
vetted when he was speaker of the house. The Governor of the state supports
it and it’s a state driven initiative along with the other states. So, I
don’t think there’s big differences. I’ve not talked to him about it, but a
lot of people, as I said including President Obama for some odd reason, who
should know better in his State of the Union address, brought the fact that
this was a national curriculum. It isn’t. There will be all sorts of
meetings by which teachers will be able to teach towards those standards.
HH: I just want to repeat because that is, I hear, you know, people like
Bill Larkin will be in charge of our national curriculum and. . . .
JB: God forbid.
HH: God forbid [laughing]. Yes, so, we’re clear on that. Number two,
Michelle Malkin and others, I think, I think it’s Michelle, worry about
federal data mining, part of this giant accumulation of data on kids and
parents and families. What’s your reaction to that criticism, Governor Bush?
JB: You know, it’s, I can see why people get riled up if opinion leaders
like Michelle Malkin or, I don’t know if she said that, but other people
like that, have made that case. The data that exists will continue to be
where it exists right now in each state. The State of Florida has a state
data bank. Every state has one. Ours is pretty advanced and we have used it
to be able to help teachers develop strategies to make sure that struggling
readers learn how to read and kids understand, or don’t understand math
concepts, get the remedial help they need. So, there’s not going to be any
change in that. There’s no federal data base in the sky somewhere that we’re
these people are going to be mining information that jeopardizes the
American families.
HH: Alright, let me get to the core objection. Okay. Let me get to the
core objection, the one that I think has the most meat to it. Yesterday, I
had on Bill Bennett and Bill said, hey, trust but verify, probably could be
a kind thing, it’s not the solution. Then Jay Mathews and I don’t know if
you’re familiar with Jay’s work at the Washington Post, but he’s a very fine
education writer and he does a lot of good work and following reform, says
look there are more important things out there that, that especially in the
area of teacher training and recruitment we have to emphasize. So, the
concern becomes does the debate over Common Core drain away energy from Ed
reform? Does it block pre-empt or in any way supplant other educational
reform that is at least as important as is Common Core standards?
JB: That’s a very interesting question. I’ve not thought about that as
maybe as much as I should be thinking about that, but the simple fact is,
for example, I’m huge supporter of school choice, both public and private.
There’s nothing in this that jeopardizes school choice programs in the
country or jeopardizes, frankly, the advocacy which I’d love to see a lot of
this energy be placed and further reformed. High expectations, high
standards is only one step towards a significantly better system that is
less monopolized, less politicized, less unionized, more focused, more
student centered. You have to start with the basic facts which is that we’re
dumbing down our expectations for young people and there is a complacency
because of that. Everybody thinks their children are doing fine, and we’re
getting our lunch eaten by global competitors that make education a higher,
higher priority. So, yes, maybe it takes away some interestness but all the
critics of Common Core states, they—I’ve not seen them show up in the
education reform fight
HH: I, ah,
JB: maybe focus energy in a positive way to bring about those changes
state by state.
HH: Let’s talk about Ed reform generally for a second. By the way, I’m on
the Great Hearts Arizona Public Charter Board so I know about public charter
schools. I know what you did on public charters and you’re a big proponent
of public charters. Bobby Jindal was on the program last week. I asked him
about Detroit given his experience in help New Orleans rebuild. He said the
most important thing was that they were able to post-Katrina start from
scratch and rebuild a charter based public school system. Is that, is that
what has to happen basically in every or in most urban education systems in
America?
JB: I completely agree with that. I think this is a great opportunity for
Detroit just as in post-Katrina it was in Louisiana. The Bush Administration
liberated the schools and Bobby Jindal, to his credit, in the Louisiana
legislature embraced that opportunity, and fully embraced it, and today
new—kids in New Orleans have a far better chance of being successful in life
because of it. Detroit has a similar kind of circumstance; declining student
population, heavily unionized, all the focuses on the economic interests of
the people inside the system. This is a great opportunity and they also have
the model that was passed in the Michigan legislature to Governor Synder’s
credit and the legislature there. So, this is a great opportunity. You are
absolutely right.
HH: Now, I also don’t know if you’ve read the book, Word Hard. Be Nice.
by Jay, but it’s about the KIPP program and where they get their teachers
from. And it turns out, and Mitt Romney said this throughout the campaign,
frequently on this show, when they studied it in Massachusetts, and maybe
you found the same thing in Florida, it’s all about the teachers. If you get
great teachers with energy and commitment to every student, who love being
in the classroom, it works. What, what did you discover about recruiting
teachers in Florida that is part of the education reform movement?
JB: So we found that the old idea of certification, meaning that you go
to 4-year education—become an ed major and you get your 4-year degree that
that’s the means by which you’re going to find the best teachers wasn’t
true. The best teachers in Florida and I think across the country come from
every walk of life and so we opened up our system. The so-called alternative
certified teachers that, I’m not quite sure why we used that term other than
it was not the traditional name, there are more teachers certified in that
method which is all sorts of means than it is the traditional schools of
education which haven’t delivered enough teachers, certainly enough quality
teachers into the classroom. So, good training, high expectations, a culture
of—a culture of where kids—people believe that kids can learn. The KIPP
model and many other models show that this can work. I think, rewarding
teachers for serving in the underserved areas and for teaching in the
classes and in the math and sciences classes where there are big shortages
and having greater learning games for like-kind students, all those things
when you’re rewarding high performance and you’re paying for that and
rewarding it and holding it up high as a great example of the kind of things
that can happen will yield more positive results. That’s the lesson across
the country for sure.
HH: Let me wrap this up former Governor Jeb Bush by talking about
education reform in the context of politics. It’s not a trick question about
2016, because I’m asking it about 2014 and 2016. How much should Republicans
be talking about education reform and to what degree, sort of a percentage
of importance on the issue set does ed reform seem to you to be in 2014 and
2016?
JB: Well, it’s, it’s not a federal government issue so on the one hand
it’s a difficult issue because Republicans will legitimately, should be, for
local control and state efforts driving this change, But, on the other hand,
if we’re going to be successful becoming the majority party, we have to
embrace the idea that a lot of people aspire to a better life. And, today in
America, particularly for younger people that aspiration requires a quality
education, and today in America, too many kids don’t get it. If we want to
connect with the aspirational class irrespective of color of one’s skin,
level of income, family structure, people that aspire to a better life, then
we better be on the side of tearing down the walls of resistance that make
it harder for those kids in those families to succeed. So, my mission –if I
had a mission statement for our success going forward it is to get beyond
being legitimately critically of the Obama Administration’s policies and
have a positive agenda for sustained economic growth where everybody can
benefit, which means they have t have the tools to do it and education is by
far the most important thing that we should focus on in that regard.
HH: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, I know the new website is
highercorestandards.org. Thanks for spending time with me and helping me
unravel this. I appreciate it very much.
JB: I appreciate your interest in it.

Thursday, January 29,
2009 Print ThisHH: You know, radio should always be informative and usually
entertaining. It can occasionally change the way you think about something,
and rarely, will actually change the way you live or act. And it’s just hard
to know when that’s going to be, but I think this hour is one of those hours
for many of you. You do not want to miss this, because right now, there are
16,000 students in 66 schools in 19 different state in the hard core urban
centers of America, who are learning despite very low expectations because
of the KIPP Program – Knowledge Is Power Program. It’s a charter school
movement. And one of the most fascinating books I have read in years, Word
Hard, Be Nice, is about this movement, where it got started, who ran it,
what’s going on in it, and it’s authored by Jay Mathews. You’ve met Jay
before on this program, long time Washington Post education reporter. And
Jay Mathews, welcome back, congratulations on a fascinating book.

JM: You’re making me very happy, Hugh. Thank you.

HH: Well, you should be pretty happy. I don’t read education books unless
I have to, usually, because they’re…

JM: This is written just for you. That was exactly the way I wrote it.

HH: It is written as stories. There are lots of amazing stories. But you
clearly, clearly love this program. In fact, I want to start by reading from
the very end of the book, when you write in the Commencement part, that you
have a mission in your life which has been to find the schools and teachers
who have done the most to overcome poverty, apathy, racial and class bias,
and raise their students to new heights of achievement. And you think you
them in Feinberg and Levin.

JM: Yup.

HH: Tell people about KIPP.

JM: As you said, it stands for Knowledge Is Power Program. It was
invented by two tall, goofy kids, well, I call them kids, they were in their
early 20s when they had only two years of experience in classrooms. They
were part of the Teach For America program. As many of your listeners know,
this is a program that started in 1990 in which they recruit the brightest
kids coming out of some of our most selective colleges, it’s very
competitive, they only take about 20% of the people who apply. They train
them just for a summer, and then they toss them into some of our worst
schools hoping that these kids’ ambitions and energy and smarts will give
them something in a classroom that most teachers don’t have. And a lot of
them flame out, but a lot of them just hit the ground running. But they all
go through this very difficult opening period, and that’s what happened to
Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin. Mike had just gotten out of Penn, David was
just out of Yale. They thought they were God’s gift to American education.
They played basketball during their training sessions most of the time. They
got in a car, they drove to Houston. By the time they had passed Blythe in
the Mojave desert, they had completely reformed in their heads American
education. They had solved all our problems. They thought they were really
brilliant. And then they got into classrooms in Houston and they were
terrible. They were in chaos. These were elementary school classrooms that
they could not control. They were so ashamed of themselves, it was that
shame that really led to KIPP, because they said to themselves, we’ve got to
get better, at least we’ve got to get better enough so we could survive the
two years we’ve committed to this program. And they lucked out. They
were…across the hall from Dave was this, one of these magical teachers you
occasionally run into, a woman named Harriet Ball, who’d grown up in the
Houston ghetto, who had invented all these games and rhymes and chants and
songs. She had noticed that kids could memorize rap songs in a couple of
seconds, so she applied that energy to her learning, and she had test scores
way up here. They started to follow her around, listened to her, copied what
she was doing, and they got better. And then they ran across a guy in Los
Angeles you’d hear of, Rafe Esquith…

HH: Yup.

JM: …who still has a 5th grade that he runs. He’s now, you know, a best
selling author. And he was coming into school at 7:00 in the morning, and
not leaving until 7:00 at night. He talked to them about the importance of a
lot more time, about taking kids on trips far away. He had turned his
classroom into a training ground for Shakespearean actors. He did
Shakespeare, and to give these 5th graders, these low income kids, really
high expectations and high experiences. That produced at the end, two great
schools – Mike’s in Houston, Dave’s in New York. They were the highest
scoring schools in their poor neighborhoods. And then they, in 2001, they
geared up. Now they’re up to 66 schools. And you know, I tell everybody
this, because it’s a factoid, one of the factoids that changed my life,
their numbers are this. Kids over four years, at a KIPP school, these are
middle schools, from 5th to 8th grade, a kid goes from, on average, from the
32nd to the 60th percentile in reading, and from the 40th to the 82nd
percentile in math. That’s going from inner-city standards to suburban
standards. That’s never happened before with this many kids in this many
different locations from one program.

HH: It’s extraordinary. There are a lot of heroes in this book, and we’ve
got a full hour to talk about this, and I want to make sure we give people
due. Doris and Don Fisher are heroes, Mattress Mac, I’m just captivated by
Mattress Mac, Scott Hamilton, Colleen Dippel and the students, and I mean,
Kenneth McGregor, it breaks your heart what happens to this young man. So I
want to take our time, but I think you said a word, Jay Mathews, that sums
this up. It is energy. It is about energy.

JM: Right.

HH: And energy that Harriet Ball unleashes in her classroom, and Mike and
Dave took and sort of built into KIPP. And you also say on Page 285, “The
key to their success,” and it is documented success, “is not the size or the
cost, or the age of the teachers or the motivation of the parents. It is the
willingness to change and quickly when students don’t improve.”

JM: Right.

HH: Those two things to me, you’ve got to bring energy every day if
you’re going to work with urban youth that do not have the benefits of
suburban or high income urban youth, and you’ve got to bring a willingness
to do what you have to do immediately, or you’ll lose them. You’ll just lose
them.

JM: That’s exactly right. And that is all fueled by expectation. If you
go into a regular school in the inner city, any big city in the United
States, you find this apathy, this listlessness, this feeling that well,
these kids really can’t go very far, so why should we work very hard to
teach them? That low expectation fuels all the problems that we’re seeing in
the inner city. These people came in expecting something much different. The
teachers that moved them said you know, you might have low expectations for
my kids, but look what I’ve done with them. They can really go, they’re as
smart as the suburban kids. You just have to give them the extra time and
encouragement to learn. I’m sitting, by the way, in the KIPP school in
Philadelphia, and I was just talking to the school leader here, who was
telling me why he had to get rid of one of his teachers last month, you
know, in the first year. It was one of his bad hires. And they get rid of
teachers who don’t have that expectation very quickly. This teacher happened
to have been recruited out of California, one of the schools in the Valley,
and she’d been teaching kids who were, Hispanic kids who were just learning
the language, and she didn’t have to do very much for them. They were
actually pretty high level, they just needed to know the language. Coming
into Philadelphia, low income African-American kids who have not had the
same good teaching that they had in California, she didn’t raise her game.
She didn’t raise her expectations. And her class wasn’t improving, and they
got rid of her, which is another sign of how different KIPP schools are,
because that teacher in a regular Philadelphia school would be hanging
around three or four years until she got past her probation period. And she
might hang around after that, and all those three or four years, she’d be
teaching hundreds of kids who would be getting a sub-standard education.
That doesn’t happen in KIPP.

HH: That’s one of the most memorable anecdotes, is when Levin shows up to
try and teach a young teacher how to teach math. And by the way, I would
love to hear rolling the numbers sometime. I need an audio of this. I can’t
imagine what it sounds like. It’s a device, obviously, to teach
multiplication tables. But Levin sounds like really a gifted math teacher,
which is a very interesting gift to have, and it’s a gift. I don’t know that
people can teach math unless they kind of can see it in front of them that
way.

JM: It’s amazing to watch and visit his schools. He’s now, he was one of
the co-founders, he started his one school in New York and then he began to
grow the New York…he didn’t want to leave New York. He didn’t want to run
the whole organization. So he has now four schools in New York, and that
number is growing. And I watched him, you know, go through one of this
schools, watched one of his teachers, and he looked disgusted. And he
stepped out and I listened to him, and he said why is she whining on like
that? The teacher was sort of lecturing. Doesn’t she know class has to be a
conversation? You should be quick and moving and calling on every kid,
getting a conversation going. And when I watched him demonstrate for a
teacher who was struggling how to do it, it was amazing. You know, over 45
minutes, he picked up the names of all these kids, he’d call on every one,
he kept the thing moving, he had jokes, he had games, he was very energetic,
as you said. And putting in that energy, it makes all the difference in a
class.

HH: Now I want to read from Page 265. When they got together to roll this
thing out nationally, they had a big meeting with the foundation types, and
they laid out what the essential of the KIPP model would be, the five
pillars it turned out to be, but I’ll just read this to you. “What would
KIPP schools have in common? Hamilton brought in a large easel, flipping
over each page that’s filled with ideas. The big points seem obvious – high
expectations for all students, a longer school day, a principal totally in
charge, an emphasis on finding the best teachers, rewards for student
success, close contact with parents, a focus on results, and a commitment to
preparing every child for a great high school, and most important, college.
They decided to call the main principles the six principles. That got
lowered to five principles which are 1. High expectations, 2. Choice and
commitment, 3. More time, 4. The power to lead, 5. Focus on results. Jay
Mathews, when we come back I want to dig into how they maintain their
quality, but also the drama of who these young men are, because their lives
are in this book. I really take my hat off. You can’t get anyone to read an
education book because they’re boring. This is fascinating, because these
are interesting men, and their lives are peopled, populated…

JM: Nobody who has interviewed me has read the book as closely as you
have, Hugh. This is quite…

HH: Oh, I love this book.

- – - –

HH: Jay, one of the things that clinched the authenticity of the book is
you went to the critics of KIPP. You got all their studies, you read them
all, you published their results, you posted what the critics say about the
program, and you are undeterred. This is a little bit about you. You
obviously believe in your heart this is the way to go.

JM: Well, you know, I’ve been doing, for 27 years as you know, since I
stumbled across Jaime Escalante at East L.A. in Los Angeles, I’ve been
looking for schools and teachers that have set us to a new level, that know
how smart our kids were in poor circumstances, and were taking them to a new
level. And these people have essentially blown me away. There are,
thankfully, a few other organizations – Uncommon Schools, Achievement First,
Yes, in various parts of the country, mostly networks or charters like KIPP
that are raising the bar in the same way. But these guys have been at it a
bit longer, and have been a little bit more ambitious, and they’ve gone
further than anybody else. And it’s amazing what you can do. I think what’s
really hopeful, Hugh, is that we have this new generation of teachers, most
of them, many of them coming out of Teach For America, who have seen, has
had that same moment of despair in the classroom and then pulled their way
out of it, seen what you can do when you apply more time and encouragement
to kids. And they are now on fire. They are rising to many places. They are
principals, they are starting charter networks. One of them is the
chancellor of the D.C. public schools.

HH: Oh, I didn’t know that.

JM: Michelle Rhee…

HH: Okay.

JM: And she is going in a direction that is just blowing everybody’s
mind. It’s going to be messy. The change is very hard. My book, as you know,
is full of examples of the excitement and the drama of all the times Mike
and Dave bumped their heads against a recalcitrant administration and all
the weird things they did and dangerous things they did to try to get past
people who were standing in the way. Michelle Rhee is doing it from the top
down, and that’s creating enormous distress in D.C. schools, but it’s all
pushing us toward a place where we can give these kids the educations that
they are ready for and deserve.

HH: Oh, this is really, the book may inspire, I think it will, a lot of
people to think about being a teacher. And there is no, one of the lessons
here, there is no cardboard cutout. I mean, Frank Corcoran is just about as
world different from Dave Levin as possible, but they become soul mates and
friends. Corcoran…did he stay in New York? I mean, that guy would hate me
given his politics…

JM: Oh, yes. This is Dave, the very mild-mannered, quiet teacher that
Dave met, was one of their roommates in Houston, and he brought with him
when he moved to New York to start his school. Frank was an anti-war type…

HH: Right.

JM: He was thrown out of Notre Dame for painting the word war backwards
on top of the ROTC building at Notre Dame, very quiet guy, very artsy. He
became a fabulous math teacher, and eventually won the Disney teacher of the
year aware. He’s still there. He’s still doing the annual KIPP winter show,
notice they don’t put Christmas in there…

HH: Right.

JM: …because these are good liberals, and don’t believe in Christmas.

HH: These are public school teachers, yes.

JM: And the winter show is amazing. That school has every kid in that
school learning to play an instrument. These are kids in the South Bronx who
have never seen an instrument at home until they get to 5th grade.

HH: Well, that’s because of Levin. That’s because of, who’s the other
teacher there? Randall.

JM: Yes, Charlie Randall.

HH: Yeah.

JM: You’re amazing, Hugh. You rally absorbed this. I’m breathless here
at…you look at the winter show, and they have the 5th graders just learning
to read music, so they have them be the actors and singers in the winter
show. The show I saw was the Christmas Carol as seen in a Bronx subway
station. And then every other student, all the sixth, all the seventh, all
the eighth graders, are arrayed in the front of the stage. They’re all
playing an instrument, and that orchestra is fabulous.
HH: Yeah, it’s am amazing…and this is in the Bronx, and this is not the
nice Bronx. There is no nice Bronx.

JM: No, no.

HH: …as far as I know. This is the Bronx Bronx.

JM: This is one of the worst parts of New York.

HH: It’s incredible, and Corcoran is not a natural teacher. That comes
through. He made himself, and he was assisted by Levin…

JM: Right.

HH: And I think this is one of the messages here, people who are driving
around listening to this should read Work Hard. Be Nice. to figure out you
don’t have to have it on Day One. These guys didn’t.

JM: Yeah.

HH They built themselves into great teachers.

JM: Right.

HH: There is, however, a very interesting aspect of this, which is not
your classic, gooey liberal. People that listen to me know I always talk
about Catholic schools, you reference them, too, Jay, that some people think
KIPP reminds them of the old, urban Catholic schools.

JM: Right.

HH: And I spent 12 years in Catholic school, eight of which were in the
Parochial schools runs by nuns, big classrooms. And what they have in common
is discipline. In fact, on Page 73, you say the guys who founded this,
Feinberg and Levin, started off saying they’re going to need the traditional
rules of classroom decorum. And a lot of this book is about how they
maintain that discipline. It’s a wonder thing to see and watch unfold,
because without it, you’ve got nothing.

JM: Exactly. I mean, the trick is, they learned after the pain of being
awful in the classroom, they learned from Harriet Ball among others that you
have to defend kids. The first thing you have to know is if you see one kid
teasing or bullying or doing anything harmful to another kid, you’re on that
right that second. You don’t let it go away. You surround the offender, you
talk to them, you think you’re really that good? You think you’re a lot
better than that person? At KIPP, they have a system where the kids who
misbehave in that way or don’t bring in their homework and so on are put on
the bench, or the porch, which means they’re isolated from other kids. They
still come to class, they still come to school, but they sit in a corner and
they are forbidden to talk to other students. They sit in the corner at
lunch away from their friends, forbidden to talk to other students for a
certain amount of time. But they must keep talking to teachers. And they’re
having lots of conversations with teachers about the choice they made, how
that’s not the right choice, if you want the kind of life with many choices,
you really have to come back to our culture. They’re really taking away the
standard youth culture in the inner city, which is kids being unhappy, mean
to each other, undisciplined, and turning it around to a place where they’re
saying we have high expectations for you. We know you’re smart. We know that
you can go very far. All you have to do is remember that you cannot treat
other people like this. We are a team and a family. It’s that sense of
togetherness that you found in the Catholic schools in the inner city way
back when, when communities were tighter. They’re recreating that in these
schools. They say we’re a part of this, we’re a team, we’re a family, that’s
not the way we treat each other. And so you have an academic part of what
they’re doing, but the moral and the spiritual part of it is just as
powerful, and is what takes these kids to the next level in their lives.

HH: One of the notes I made that I went back to a couple of times is a
Harriet Ball saying early in the book, If you don’t protect your kids, they
won’t respect you. And they do protect their…because there are kid
predators, not gun-toting gang members who are killing kids, but they’re
just bullies. There are bullies in every classroom.

JM: Right.

HH: And that will destroy the opportunity to learn.

JM: Yeah, there’s a myth out there that KIPP is as good as it is because
they just throw out all the bullies. Absolutely wrong. One study in the Bar
Area schools, there are five of them, found that there were only, in one
year, only three kids expelled from five schools total, which is way below
what you find in regular schools. They look at the bullies as special
challenges. And they’re talking to them, they’re looking for ways that they
could turn them around. Kenneth McGregor, the person, the kid in Houston you
were talking about, was in that category. And they found something to
connect with him. When he suddenly realized that these teachers were
actually serious about his potentiality, when they got him interested in the
basketball team of which he was very good, when he bonded with Mike Feinberg
who was the principal and the basketball coach, that changed it. Kids are
looking for an adult. They’re looking for someplace they can be happy and
comfortable. Once they establish a relationship with an adult and a school,
somebody who clearly cares about them, then that changes most of the bullies
into something entirely different.

- – - –
HH: It’s just an amazing and important read. I devoured it in one
cross-country flight on Jet Blue coming back from New York last week, and
took copious notes, and want you read it and especially if you’re a
teaching, thinking about being a teacher, or you’re a parent who needs to
find a place for their child in the inner city where the schools may not be
functioning, Work Hard. Be Nice. is in bookstores. It’s at amazon.com. I’ve
linked it at Hughhewitt.com. I want to pause for just a moment. We’ve
mentioned Kenneth McGregor three times. And it’s one of the storylines that
goes through. The young man died tragically of enlarged heart syndrome
playing basketball. They established a scholarship for him. But when
teachers fly from San Francisco and New York to grieve with the family of a
student they haven’t taught for four years, they’re extraordinary men. And I
think that’s something that just comes through.

JM: Right, I mean, these are teachers that take the team and family
concept seriously. It’s part of their lives. I tell a lot of stories about
kids that these two guys touched. Dave had one of his students in his New
York school, a young woman in the South Bronx, get into St. Marks, probably
the Toniest of Toney private schools.

HH: Yeah.

JM: And she was doing pretty well, but she fell in with some middle class
kids who had different values than hers, and she was caught shoplifting her
senior year. She called Dave and said you know, I need some help. He was
there the next morning with a stern face and a long lecture about the bad
choices she was making, but he got her out of there, got her into another
school, and sent her on her way to the University of Maryland where she’s
doing very well now. Mike, my favorite stories about Mike Feinberg in
Houston, one of his students was applying to the college of Occidental in
Los Angeles, and there was a problem because she had come in illegally, her
parents weren’t married, and that created all kinds of problems in
regularizing her status as far as this application goes, as far as getting
financial aid. And Mike got the two parents together and persuaded them to
get married, which I thought was just amazing.

HH: And the first story you told, I loved it that Levin got up there and
while he’s chewing her out, he’s also arranging for a lawyer to make sure
that the charge against her is dismissed after eight weeks of community
service so it doesn’t wreck her life.

JM: Right.

HH: So he’s doing tough love, but there’s a lot of love in that. Now the
question is, that I think you’ve answered it implicitly, but explicitly I
want to know, can it survive without these guys, Mike Feinberg and Dave
Levin, if they’re not there, if you take them and their energy out of the
equation, does KIPP fail?

JM: I think they’ve already proved that it will succeed, because what
they have done is the magic of the…I’m going to write another book about
KIPP about how it grew, which is the real news story for an education
reporter. You expect, you know, special people like these two guys to
produce great institutions. That’s a given. They’re special people, so
that’s what happens. What they have done, however, is create a system where
they are training Mikes and Daves. They are picking their best teachers, the
best teachers they can find, giving them a year’s training in management and
in how the best KIPP schools are run, that some of the training is done at
Stanford and some other various schools, and after a year, those selected
school leaders start their own KIPP school. Generally, they choose where
they want to go, and because they are charter schools, they have the great
adventure of starting their own school and doing things the way they think
they ought to be done, picking the best teachers that they can find,
creating a culture that will work for them and their kids, and doing what is
the magic you pointed out, is the magic of KIPP. If something doesn’t work,
they try something else – instantly creative, instantly improvised. And we
now have dozens of examples of principals and school leaders who I would
argue are even better than Mike and Dave. I’m sitting in the KIPP
Philadelphia, where there’s a young man named Marc Mannella, who’s amazing
and his scores are off the roof. There’s a woman in D.C. I’ve been watching,
the first woman from Show Me KIPP, Susie Schaeffler…
HH: Yeah.

JM: …who has since 2001, when she started her first KIPP school, she has
created five more KIPP schools. The three of them are the top three rated in
terms of test scores, the top three public schools in the District of
Columbia. And during those same eight years, she’s had three kids.

HH: Wow.

JM: Somebody who can organize like that, you know, could really change
the country. She’s doing things for schools in D.C. And there are, I can
cite you two dozen other leaders like that who are just as good as Mike and
Dave because they were picked carefully, and then given the power to lead,
given the power to make their own decisions, not to have to be cow-towing to
superintendents, but taking their teachers as a team and doing things that
work for kids.
- – - –
HH: If you’ve walked into the middle of it, you’ll have to get the
podcast tonight when it is posted at Hughhewitt.com. If you’re a teacher, if
you’re even thinking about becoming a teacher, even if you can’t get near a
KIPP school because they’re filled up or you want to stay in a town where
there isn’t a KIPP school, read Work Hard. Be Nice., the brand new book by
Jay Mathews, to get a glimpse of what’s ahead – the hardship and the
heartwarming joys of it come through in this book like very few I’ve ever
seen. Talk about teaching now, Jay Mathews, there are enemies of KIPP out
there. There were enemies when they started. In fact, I was reminded Bill
Bryson wrote in his book, A Short History Of Nearly Everything, that you
should always marvel at how lucky you are just to be alive given the number
of genes that don’t get out of the gene pool. It’s amazing to me that they
got this thing out of Houston, especially after the stunt of leaning on Rod
Paige’s car all day. That would not, that normally wouldn’t fly. Rod Paige
must be a pretty good guy. Tell people about that.
JM: Every year that these guys were building their schools, they started
with 5th grades and then they wanted to add a 6th grade the next year, 7th
grade the next year, in both New York and Houston, every year they tried to
grow in that way, they faced what seemed to be impossible barriers to get
over. The first year, Mike Feinberg in Houston couldn’t get any more space,
so he had an advocacy in democracy lesson which he instructed all his 5th
graders how we in a democracy redress our grievances. We call up, we send
letters, and he had them practice calling up district administrators and
asking why they hadn’t arranged more space for them the next year. They had
all these little kids calling up all these big shots, and the big shots just
went ape. They were so angry with Mike having done that, but they got him
his space, and it made a difference the second year.

HH: And who was the West Houston superintendent that protected him?

JM: Anne Patterson was their one rabbi…

HH: Great.

JM: …the one person that helped them, and she was just in tears because
all of her bosses were on her case for letting this overgrown adolescent,
Mike Feinberg, into their school district.

HH: Right.

JM: But they got him the space, and next year, it got worse. Again he
wasn’t getting the space to add a seventh grade, and again, Anne couldn’t
find any space for him, so…and he tried to get an appointment with Rod
Paige, the future U.S. Education Secretary who was then the superintendant
in Houston, and he couldn’t get through his secretaries, so he noticed when
he visited the school headquarters that there was the superintendant’s
parking space right there in front of the main entrance. So he showed up in
the parking lot one day at 2:00 PM with a sheaf of papers to grade, and just
hung around the car, leaning on the car for five or six hours until Paige
came out, and he confronted Paige, and begged him to consider his problem.
Paige didn’t even know about it, said come see me tomorrow morning, and they
worked it out.

HH: But end runs around bureaucracies, they don’t normally work. These
guys had like seven of them each.

JM: Yeah, exactly. And it shows, I think, that change is hard in these
schools, but if you have people who are willing to really annoy the power
structure, who are really willing to push things to the edge, they are more
likely than not to get some progress. The problem is, the real enemy here,
is apathy and listlessness, and that comes out of the most humane instincts.
My theory is that most teachers become teachers because they’re wonderful
people. They’re very, they’re the nicest people on the planet. They’re very
humane, but that gets in their way, because if they see anybody pushing kids
too hard, they think well, this is going to hurt that kid. And if I make a
choice to be more challenging for this kid, it may be, it may hurt them. It
may be too much for them. That is their instinct. And so it stands in the
way of people like Mike and Dave who really understand that if you challenge
a kid, they’re going to thrive. Most teachers think if you challenge a kid,
they might break down. That’s the problem, it’s an attitudinal problem, and
it comes from our deepest, humane feelings about kids, which is why it’s so
hard to uproot, because it’s based on actually good feeling rather than bad.

HH: And there’s also some received wisdom and limited them. They were
told don’t visit homes. And I can understand that. They’re a liability…

JM: And that’s still the rule.

HH: It is, but they always did, right?

JM: They always did. Well, they did at first in desperation, because in
Dave’s case, he had gotten so impatient with a kid who was just awful, and a
huge 5th grader that he had to discipline, that he had picked the kid up
once one day and carried him back to his chair, and the kid was so heavy he
dropped him into the chair. And he figured well, I’m fired, I’m gone, but at
least I can go apologize to the mom. So he went out and found this kid’s
house, and he went in and knocked on the door. The mother was astonished to
see a teacher at her house, but she invited him in. He said you know, I had
to get a little rough with your kid today, and she said well, I know my boy,
and I’m not surprised by that. And they bonded. They both had the same
problem with the same kid, and that gave Dave credibility at the kid’s home,
which helped him enormously when he had to discipline the kid in the future.
So they started visiting all their parents.

HH: And Feinberg moved to the neighborhood.

JM: Yup, he did. And Feinberg moved into this low income apartment
complex in the Gulfton section of Houston. People who know Houston know
that’s a sort of a huge, rabbit warren of small apartments for mostly
Central American immigrants. And he began to recruit and talk to parents as
a member, as a part of the neighborhood, which is a great thing to do. And
this keeps happening.

Why Parents Are "Paranoid" About Common Core

2/21/2014 Michelle Malkin

This week's award for Biggest Common Core Jerk goes to Missouri GOP state legislator Mike Lair. Parents, teachers and administrators who object to the government education "standards" racket -- which usurps local control, impedes academic achievement and undermines family privacy -- have politicians on the defensive. The only thing these Fed Ed flacks and hacks can respond with is cowardly condescension.

Lair, chairman of Missouri's House Appropriations Committee on Education, inserted an $8 budget line item to mock Common Core critics as tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorists. Lair's item reads: "For two rolls of high-density aluminum to create headgear designed to deflect drone and/or black helicopter mind reading and control technology."

Common Core jerkitude is a bipartisan disease. Lair's ridicule of grave parental concerns about Common Core data mining follows in the footsteps of Democratic U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan (who derided opponents as "white suburban moms") and GOP former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (who derided opponents' motives as "purely political"). It's all a snitty, snotty smokescreen that will backfire as more families from all parts of the political spectrum discover the truth about Common Core's invasive nature.

Assessing Common Core is inextricably tied to the big business of data collection and data mining. States that took the Race to the Top bribes in exchange for adopting Common Core must now comply with the edutech requirements of two private testing conglomerates, the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers or the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Common Core states also agreed to expand existing statewide longitudinal database systems that contain sensitive student data from pre-kindergarten through postsecondary education.

Will Estrada and Katie Tipton of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association conclude that "it will become increasingly difficult to protect the personal information of homeschool and private school students as these databases grow." In addition to stimulus and Race to the Top enticements, both the Education and Labor Departments have funded several other initiatives to build and make various interoperable student and teacher databases.

"Before our eyes," Estrada and Tipton warn, "a 'national database' is being created in which every public school student's personal information and academic history will be stored." It's no laughing matter.

Just this week, SafeGov.org, a computer privacy watchdog group, reported that Google has admitted in recent court filings that "it data mines student emails for ad-targeting purposes outside of school, even when ad serving in school is turned off." The newly exposed documents explicitly "confirm in a sworn public court declaration that even when ad serving is turned off in Google Apps for Education (GAFE), the contents of users' emails are still being scanned by Google in order to target ads at those same users when they use the web outside of Google Apps (for example, when watching a YouTube video, conducting a Google search, or viewing a web page that contains a Google+ or DoubleClick cookie)." Last month, I reported on how Google is building brand loyalty through a questionable GAFE certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company.

In New York, opposition from left, right and center has forced education bureaucrats to delay uploading personally identifiable student information to the Common Core-linked inBloom data cloud, a partnership of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

In Colorado, Jefferson County families from both sides of the political aisle forced the district to withdraw from a meddling inBloom pilot project adopted without parental consent.

Dr. Gary Thomson of the Utah-based Early Life Child Psychology and Education Center, a father of four and a clinical psychologist, is asking the fundamental questions politicians refuse to ask -- and continue to scorn -- regarding the Common Core-driven data collection:

--"For what EXACT purpose will this sensitive data be utilized?"

-- "What organizations will have access to identifiable academic records? Other than generic information regarding race, age, gender and geographic location, why does the federal database require identifiable information to be accessible?"

--"If the political responses to these questions are 'all information contained in the database is unidentifiable and security stored,' then why were changes made to FERPA to allow an exemption to educational privacy rights when it comes to the implementation of the Common Core State Standards?"

When politicians want to evade accountability, they go on the attack. They don't loathe anti-Common Core parents because they're "paranoid." They fear them because "paranoid" is the political demagogue's word for active, alert and well-informed.

Credit: Townhall.com

School Choice and Common Core: Mortal Enemies

Michelle Malkin 1/31/2014

The freedom-enhancing, life-improving power of school choice is more
than a theory for me. It's more than a talking points memo or
teleprompter speech. Unlike many of the politicians paying lip service
to National School Choice Week this week, the issue of expanding
educational opportunity and freedom for all is something I live,
breathe, practice and witness every day.

My mother was a public school teacher who taught in a majority-minority
district in New Jersey for more than two decades. She and my father
worked hard to put their own children in a mix of public and private
Catholic schools. My own two children have been enrolled in private
schools, religious schools and public schools. After a great deal of
research, we moved from the East Coast to Colorado to escape the
corrupted, dumbed-down curriculum of an overpriced private girls'
school.

Life lesson: It's not just government schools that are the problem. Many
supposedly "elite" schools indulge in the senseless pedagogical fads
that infect monopoly public schools.

Every family in America deserves maximized, customized choices in
education. It is the ultimate key to closing that "income inequality"
gap the politicos are always gabbling about. Yet, the White House and
Democrats beholden to public school unions and their money are the ones
blocking the school choice door.

We were blessed to find a community of parents and public school
educators in Colorado Springs who embrace high standards, academic
excellence and strong character education for students of every race,
creed and class. Competition in the secondary-school marketplace
provided a desperately needed alternative for educational consumers who
wanted more and better for their kids.

For the past four years, our kids, now 13 and 10, attended a
high-achieving public charter school that caters to a truly diverse
student body.

Our 13-year-old is now in 8th grade at the charter school. This year, we
opted to homeschool our youngest. We cobbled together a 5th-grade
curriculum with excellent materials from the Calvert homeschool series,
Memoria Press and classic Saxon Math. Another nearby public charter
school offers a homeschool collective once a week.

Family participation is not an afterthought. It's the engine that drives
everything. The dedicated parents, grandparents, foster parents and
legal guardians I've met in the charter school movement and
homeschooling community see themselves as their children's primary
educational providers. Not the U.S. Department of Education. Not the
White House. Not GOP politicians cashing in on top-down "education
reform."

After several years of educational satisfaction, however, we've
encountered another sobering life lesson: There is no escape, no
foolproof sanctuary, from the reach of meddling Fed Ed bureaucrats and
cash-hungry special interests who think they know what's best for our
kids.

Big-government Republicans such as Jeb Bush and flip-flopping Mike
Huckabee pay lip service to increasing school choice and supporting
charter schools, private schools and homeschooling. Yet, they have been
among the loudest GOP peddlers of the Common Core
"standards"/textbook/testing/data collection regime thrust upon schools
who want nothing to do with it.

"Alignment" with the new regime means mediocrity, mandates, privacy
invasions and encroachments on local control and educational
sovereignty. I've seen it in my daughter's polluted math curriculum. We
are not alone. The threat is not just in one subject. It's systemic.

Derek Anderson, principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort
Collins, Colo., wrote to me last fall about the existential threat his
charter school faces. "Ridgeview Classical Schools is a K-12 charter
school that offers a classical liberal arts education to approximately
800 students. We were established in 2001, and we have generally been
one of the top three schools in Colorado since opening," he said. "Our
most significant issue with Common Core and the PARCC exams is that we
feel we will lose the autonomy and other protections granted to us when
Colorado adopted its Charter Schools Act in 1994."

As I've noted, PARCC is the behemoth, federally funded testing
consortium (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and
Careers) that raked in $186 million through President Obama's Race to
the Top program to develop nationalized tests "aligned" to the top-down
Common Core program. Anderson and informed administrators, educators and
parents like him understand: "PARCC is truly the enforcement mechanism
that will coerce schools into adopting the Common Core curriculum. We
cannot do this. It is entirely against the mission and philosophy of our
school." It is, in short, sabotage. Anderson calls it an "almost
existential dilemma. Our mission and philosophy are irreconcilable with
Common Core's."

Homeschool mom of six and blogger Karen Braun of Michigan sees the
threat to her choice, too. Her trenchant message: "True school choice
allows a parent to choose any school that meets their child's needs, not
just those that adopt Common Core State standards and assessments."

No fully funded school voucher system in the world can improve the
educational experience if Fed Ed controls the classroom and homeschool
room. Coerced conformity kills choice.